Anne Gilchrist - Artist

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The Oak Year and Oak Leaf Panels

The Oak Year, which I started in April 2014, is made up of many hundreds of individual oak leaves painted from real-life specimens gathered week by week. Each leaf's portrait is my immediate response to colour, form and character. In painting each leaf I left a trace of my observations and experiences, a trail of time passing through growth and change and decay. This work is now complete, as the whole year is represented, from tiny emergent leaves breaking the monotonous brown of winter, through the bright green of spring, the tough, dark leaves of summer, the colour bursts of autumn and back again to the browns of winter. It has taken 24 panels, each 5ft x 4ft.

From 25th March- 1st April The Oak Year had its first public showing as a floor installation in Perth Museum and Art Gallery. As part of Platform 17, the inaugural festival of Perthshire creativity, it was also translated onto Perth Concert Hall's 22-screen digital display, which is now part of the permanent collection there. A set of four limited edition giclee prints "The Four Seasons", taken from these images is currently for sale at the concert hall. (£50 each or £150 for a set of four).

Having embarked on Oak Leaf depictions, I cannot seem to stop. I currently produce, on a regular basis, single panels that depict leaves from a single tree. Each panel shows leaves from my chosen tree for the duration of approximately one month. All of my subjects thus portrayed are trees well known to me, and with which I have a long-term acquaintance.